Richard
by Edamessiah
Summary: It's easy for lines to become blurred when people are just points and masks have voices. And who can say they're not people when they have a name and you don't?
1. Chapter 1

I sort through the trunk of my car for a few minutes before entering. It's important to get the right mask. Be the right person. So to speak.

Wolf? Not today.

Through the door, the muted sound of Russian chatter sounds like the TV turned right down, and I expect to hear studio laughter or applause. Nothing, though. I _do _hear a dog...

Collie? No, don't think so.

_I should really start bringing a pipe_, I think to myself, _or a bat. Could buy a gun? _I discard the idea. No sense cashing out for a piece when I can find ten or twenty in any one of these places.

Pig? Maybe.

Enough deliberating. I grab the Rooster – Richard, I call him. It helps to put a name to them, I'm not sure why. I can never really tell if it's an identity I'm slipping into or a friend I happen to be wearing. I can never really tell much, actually. I hardly feel like I'm here at all.

I wait for the approaching footsteps and kick the door in when they draw close. The wood meets skin, muscle, bone. _480 Points! _There's a crack and a slam as the guy hits the wall, and I scoop up whatever he was holding as I charge past. Two guys headed my way – one with a handgun– so I duck into an adjoining room and pray there are no guns inside. Lucky me. Just one guy, whose head I break open with what turns out to be a golf club. _400 Points! _No time to deliberate, though, cause the other two are on their way through. I hurl the club when I see the first glimpse of a white suit, and _300 Points! _he goes down. I swing a right hook at the next guy, who _600 Points! _collapses. I grab the club, put my foot on his chest, take a swing. _1000 Points! _The other guy's up already, only winded by the throw, so I put my whole body into turning, swinging, hitting. _600 Points! _I can't avoid seeing the dent the club leaves in his skull, and I know I'll be seeing it later, when I close my eyes. Or when I sleep.

But it's just like the army. Just like Hawaii. It doesn't matter. They don't matter.

_That's the spirit. _

There's still the rest of the floor to clear, and I hear a dog snarl as it smells blood. I cock the club over my shoulder and tense up, locking my knees in a power stance. A Doberman. They're always fucking Dobermans. But I've forgotten something.

I turn around. The guy by the door is stood, quaking, and I remember I'm holding his weapon – his _only_ weapon. He looks at me with absolute terror in his eyes, and I think for a se-

_Kill him._

He's unarmed, defenseless. Can I even do this? Ca-

_Kill him. _

Richard, I don't want to, I don-

_Kill him. You must kill him._

I'm hesitating. He can see it. He'll make a move any second.

_Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. _

I kill him.

_480 Points!_

His blood sprays my face like warm, thick water from a wave crashing on rocks. I hear it hit the walls, hear the life leave his body in a cut-off burst of terrified Russian.

_Feel nothing. _

I feel nothing.

I put the dog down when it comes and it _600 Points! _practically bounces when it hits the floor. How many more mafia guys down here? Not many, I imagine; it seemed quiet from the outside, only a couple of floors and not big ones at that. Hurrying down the hall, the smell of weed hits me like a truck. So that's what they've got going on here. I duck into a room, lay out the occupants with an effortless swing. _480 Points! 900 Points! _They didn't even stand up. The air in here is smoky, and it fucking stinks. I feel like I'm getting stoned just stood in this tiny, dark room, so I duck out and slam the door closed. A sentry at the end of the hall thinks he sees me, but he doesn't – I'm already back round the corner. Might need that gun from before. I prise it from a bloodied, tattooed hand, try not to notice the presence of a wedding ring on the third finger. This gun is foreign to me, but I don't need to be an expert with it right now. I just need to aim, squeeze, compensate for recoil. And I do.

_300 Points!_

The sentry's emptied head pings off the wall and he collapses forwards, his hand squeezing the Uzi and provoking a burst of bullets to embed themselves in the wallpaper. I hear clattering, a smash, a few sets of footsteps headed quickly this way. I throw the gun aside and grab the club, which by now has bent a little out of shape. But it should do for these. The footsteps get closer and closer, shoe soles skidding and clapping on the tiles, and then they're on me. The first swing gets one _480 Points! _and he's soon followed by two more who go down _600 Points! 1000 Points!_ just as easily. They fall flat on the ground and slide through their own blood, leaving gruesome trails out from the corner.

_GO!_

I slump down for a breath. I didn't realise how much I was panting

_GO!_

but I am, a lot. I can taste blood, and I wonder whether it's just over-exertion

_GO!_

or someone's actual blood that's found a way onto my tongue. I lift the mask a

_GO!_

little, spit on the floor. Thick. Red. Disgusting. I pull the mask down tighter, stand

_GO!_

up, look for something to replace my battered golf club. A splintered baseball bat?

_GO!_

For fuck's sake Richard, I'm fucking GOING! The bat will do. I head for the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

_Hawaii. 1985. _

Cicadas chirp and click somewhere in the foliage whilst the light leaves us. The fire's still roaring, and as the cold pulls in around us I'm more and more grateful for it. I shrug on my jacket, ignoring the bulletholes and rips from the undergrowth.

"You got a light?"

I nod, and hand my lighter to the air to my left. My partner takes it, holds it to his face, a little away from the brittle ends of his considerable beard. The tiny flame flickers in his glasses a couple of times, then holds and soon dies. He blows out a long, thin cloud slowly, and tilts his head back.

"Do you ever get sick of this?" He offers conversation, but I'm not in the mood; I shrug and take a long drag on my own cigarette. When it dies, I drop it amongst the gathering butts in the dirt. One by one they pool around my feet, like so many drained corpses, curled and bent in on themselves. I let the haze of smoke singe my throat for a second, then breathe it sharply out.

"Well I know I do. I just wanna get home. I really do." He sighs, his voice rife with melancholy and self-pity, but not the selfish kind. He's looking for sympathy, but he's looking to _give _it too. He wants a friend. I can't be that, though.

He chuckles - a strange sound to hear out here even as distant gunfire tears up some far-flung corner of the island. "Shame we're so damn good at our jobs then, I guess. They'll never let us go so long as we keep doing all their work for them." I nod half-heartedly and offer a smile. Barnes and Daniels have turned in for the night, wasted off the beer they looted from the last place we hit – a bar or a club or something indistinguishable. One mass grave of civilians and soldiers is like any other, as far as I'm concerned. I rejected the booze, but they helped themselves and were hammered within the hour. Whatever works, I guess.

"I know it bothers you. Killing people. It bothers me too, but..." He pauses, as if deciding whether or not he should share whatever wisdom he has in store. "But you don't have to think of it like that. It's like..." He scowls. For some reason, this seems very difficult for him to say. I continue smoking. "Like a game. Right? Each soldier, all of these Russians, is just a handful of points to earn. And you just think about it like that. It sounds... I don't know, it sounds stupid now that I've said it out loud. That's the way of things, isn't it? Better off in your head. But it's true. It's just a game, and we're just playing it."

I consider this all the way through my next cigarette. And the one after. Could he be right? This hard-boiled Lieutenant with the heart of gold sat next to me has more notches on his gun than the rest of us – possibly more than all of us combined, for all I know. If there's any sense to his words, I can't afford to ignore them.

I offer no reaction, though. Just long drags, and sharp breaths.

"Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, though. Just stop me if I am. It works for me, but I guess you could have your own thing. Or maybe you like it." He pauses. I guess stoicism has communicated the impression that I'm a psychopath, because he seems genuinely nervous in the light of this possibility. "Is that it? Do you like hurting other people?"

These words stick in my mind. They will for a long time, but I don't know that yet. I can't explain what I feel when I kill someone. I can't describe the feeling of blood on my skin, a knife in my hand, the knowledge that someone else is dead and I'm not. Killing people, maybe... maybe he's right about that. But hurting people?

I don't know that either.

I realise I've said nothing. I shake my head, two quick jerks, a firm no. I don't know if that's true or not.

"Hmm. Well. Like I said, it's just a game to me. So I guess it doesn't matter. And you're meant to enjoy games, but I, uh... I can't enjoy this one. Maybe it's not healthy to get so detached, I don't know..." He trails off. I think he realises I'm not going to talk anytime soon, cause he stands up and takes his beer with him. He hovers there for a moment. I can feel his eyes looking at me as he steals glances between me and the jungle. He starts to walk away, and his voice takes a sullen tone.

"That's just my advice anyway. Take it or leave it, buddy. It's on the house."


	3. Chapter 3

The carpet on the stairs is matted with dried blood, which probably belongs – or belonged – to the people who lived here. It's a strange layout for a building; I can't really picture it ever being anything other than a drug den with imposing men in white suits, carrying blunt objects, wandering here and there. But it was something else: it was a home, and now it's not. It's a grave. I'm just here to make my contribution to the pile.

The first guy I see charges me, hatred igniting his face, and I lay him out with a solid jab. _300 Points!_ He collapses against the wall, shattering a picture on the way down as he groans and slumps. I grip his bald skull and ram it with all the force I can muster into the wall two times, three times, four times until _900 Points! _he leaves a bright, wet stain behind him. I grab his weapon of choice – a small balisong, not much but good enough – and hold it up at shoulder height. I lock the handle closed and, whipping the door open, immediately pick a target. Shotgun, sitting down, no more than ten feet away. I hurl the knife. _480 Points! _It sticks out of his neck, a gout of blood flying out from a mangled artery, and he chokes for a moment before collapsing forwards in his seat. There's two others, and I have time to grab his shotgun if I want to. Could be loud, though. Better idea. I grab the gun, a pump-action military model, and grip it by the barrel like a club. Swing. _600 Points! _I brain the second guy _1000 Points! _soon after on the back swing, and I notice something dislodge from his head on his way down to the floor. I look down. An eyeball gruesomely looks up at me from where it lays a few inches out of its socket, tethered to a demolished pound of grey matter by his optic nerve. I flip the shotgun in my hands, and move on.

Taking a moment to listen, I estimate there's no more than four guys left up here. The smell of their weed and God knows what else is much, much stronger – they've practically hotboxed the whole floor, and if I stay too long I'm pretty sure I'll start seeing things.

_More things, you mean._

Whatever.

_The eyeball is still looking at you, you know._

I know.

But there's something more of interest in this room before I carry on. The door at the far end leads to the rest of the rooms I'll need to clear out, but there's another, smaller door – a walk-in closet, I think. Blood pools around it. The bodies of the former inhabitants? I jerk the door open.

Someone falls out. Or something, because what's left of this sorry piece of work is hard to call human. His arms are gone – completely, from the shoulders – and the chewed flesh tells me that dogs have had their way with this body at some point. The face is peeled away, not cleanly but definitely not rough either, like a hunter-flayed wolf. A human skull stares at me when I turn the corpse over. Below the ribcage, the abdomen is torn apart, the few organs left that remain hanging in shreds amongst the mutilated muscle tissue and skin.

I hesitate, then try to flinch.

_I'm not convinced._

No, me neither.

But the surprises don't stop there. On a shelf in the closet sits the head of an animal. Not decapitated and bloody, but shiny latex. A deer. I fold it up and stuff it in my jacket pocket. I'll need a name for that later.

My chest is thumping, a dull echo of the bass that throbs through the walls in every corner of the house. I suspect if it weren't for the music and the drugs, these jobs would be impossible. But as it is, everyone here's too deafened or high to even know I'm here until they're picking shards of their own skull out of the carpet. Might even risk the shotgun for the rest of them, but... no, better not to get careless. I grab a beer bottle and grip it by the neck. Then I shunt through the door with my shoulder.

Two guys in this room, both stood around with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. One has a machete slung over his shoulder. Where the fuck did he get a machete? The other's defenceless and fucking terrified. I smash the bottle over his friend _480 Points!_ and he recoils, losing his grip on the long knife. It clatters on a coffee table as he clutches his newly-glassed face, and I make a wide slash for his neck with the broken end I'm holding. _600 Points! _The other guy's found his courage and makes a swing at me; I duck under his fist, grab the machete on the way, and come back up swinging. _1100 Points! _The machete goes in at his waist and gets stuck somewhere between his sternum and shoulder. Blood - and fuck knows what else - begins pouring out of him in torrents and he almost breaks in half as he tumbles backwards onto a chair, taking it down with him. My shoes are sticky with gore now, my clothes saturated with it. New stains on top of old. I must be a grim vision to these guys – it's no wonder this one practically crapped his pants when I came in. Two down, two to go.

_Make it terrible. Make them bleed._

I will.

I go back for the shotgun. Picking it off the grimy, bloody carpet, I wipe the handle off with my sleeve, and chamber a shell. _Chu-chk!_

I hear a door go and my head jerks. Nothing in sight, so it must be in the adjoining room. Bathroom? Haven't seen one yet, so it must be. That'll make things easier. I give it a few seconds before slamming my foot into the door and levelling my shotgun at a guy who's flicking through a dirty magazine. The music, I can tell, is coming from here; I can't hear a thing, and neither can he. He sees me rather than hears, and there's a split second of complete shock and disbelief registered on his face before he throws the magazine down and goes for a rifle. But he doesn't make it. I aim for the elbow.

_300 Points!_

I can't hear him wailing, but I can see it on his face. His arm blows apart like a firework, his forearm and hand dissolved into paste on the sofa. He clutches his arm in agony and shock, staring at the mangled stump and screaming, no noise beyond the bass-heavy music making it to my ears. I leave him there for now and make my way to the bathroom door, slamming it open with a jab of my elbow and rushing in. The guy's facing away from me, both hands in front of him and a shotgun similar to my own propped against the toilet he's pissing in. I push the barrel of the shotgun into the back of his neck, leave it long enough for him to know what's about to happen, and pull the trigger. _700 Points! _A headless corpse is thrown forwards onto the toilet, bending grotesquely like a ragdoll onto the contours of the seat and basin. His blood, sprayed in a wide circle on the cracked wall tiles ahead of me, begins running down to the floor, where it pools.

I took a risk leaving the other guy with one working arm and an AK-47, but as I guessed he seems too overcome by pain to do anything with it. I drop my own gun and sink to my knees, straddling his chest and cracking my knuckles. _Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack. Crack. 1000 Points! _The wet thudding of my fists on his cheeks and eyes and mouth and skull is muted by the music, but I can hear it in my head.

_Stage Clear!_

_GO TO CAR._

I'm not ready. I need to calm down. I need to-

_GO TO CAR._

Just shut the fuck up, Richard! I need-

_GO TO CAR._

I get up, and shake my hands off. Droplets of blood are shrugged off like rain off an umbrella. I breathe in. Out. In, longer. Out, fast.

_GO TO C-_

I take the mask off. Turning it in my hands, it feels hard to believe something so innocuous could be so... what? Terrifying? Sinister? Deadly, even? All those things, and more besides. The rooster's flaccid latex face is coated entirely in patches and flecks of blood, rivulets running down to the neckline. There's some blood that's made it through the mask and into my eyes – in the frenzy, I couldn't even tell, but now it's irritating and impossible to ignore. I rub with my knuckles until it feels better.

Fuck.

Fucking hell, this is fucked. What have I done. What the fuck have I fucking done. Fuck.

His face, shit, his face isn't a face, it's a fucking Picasso. And his arm, oh my fucking God.

I can't bear to glance into the bathroom, but I can't help it either. There's so much fucking blood, how could they have so much blood? Trees. Why are there trees? These weren't here before. Cicadas. In the city? No. This is wrong. Russian barked over loudspeakers. AK-47's in the jungle. Fuck, there's so much blood. Bodies heaped in the drained pool, none of them even bagged, swimming in their own fucking blood. We throw more on. More bodies. More blood. Always more, always more.

I can't take it, I can't stop-

I have to-

Shaking hands. Mask over head. Pull it down. Breathe.

_GO TO CAR._

I compose myself. My heart rate slows, my breathing returns from my mouth to my nose.

_GO TO CAR._

Is that good enough, Richard? Is that enough?

_GO TO CAR._

Please let it be enough.

_GO TO CAR._

I go to the car.


	4. Epilogue

_You're done. And that's okay. _

_You've done what you were meant to do, after all. And didn't you perform wonderfully? We're all very impressed. Very pleased. I know I am. _

_But I'm afraid this is where we part._

_It looks like you've decided to accept what you have coming. Most don't, you know. Most insist on rampant, illogical blazes of glory. They think they deserve a last stand, a swan song. But you have. I'm pleased. Proud, I'd say, if such a thing made any sense. I can't take any responsibility. This is all on you! And how well you've done!_

_Looks like the police are here. Long way down, isn't it? Maybe you'll jump. That's what the rest do. The ones that don't accept what they've got coming, they wither fight it or choose death on their own terms. I don't think you will, though. I think you're better than that. _

_That's the door. I think it's for you. _

_You've done well._

_Goodbye. _

_Oh, hmm._

_Hold on a second._

_Actually, I think you probably deserve it._

_I was going to leave you now, and move on. But surely you have so many questions! And perhaps it's unfair that you never got the chance to answer them. You walked your path well, but who am I to say it's fair that it was the only path you had?_

_So. Answers. Number one, who am I? There's nothing clear or satisfying I can tell you, I'm afraid. Suffice it to say that I'm what keeps soldiers killing when they should have gone mad long ago. I'm the stuff nightmares and serial killers are made of. I'm the joy you pretend not to feel when you break a man's neck and know he'll never be the one that kills you. Blood, death, wanton havoc and unrelenting suffering. All me. You're welcome. Or should I apologise?_

_Number two, where am I going? Well I'm afraid there's an awful lot of work left to do. I hope you didn't think your story was the only one! There's all sorts of tales to tell, people to meet, lives to watch like clips in a home movie. I followed you all the way, but I think my visits after you will be remarkably more brief. In fact, I think I'll just come to them at the end! Would you think me self-indulgent for that? But I already know their stories – why not skip to the best parts?_

_Number three, what happens next? Well now, that would be telling, wouldn't it? I think you'd much rather find that out yourself. But I can give you something. You'll have progeny – a whole squabble of children made in your image, trailing in your bloody little footsteps. They'll do well. And then they'll go too far. The man who shot you, he and you will die as one. He'll accept it, just like you. He was the best of you all, just so you know. Morally speaking. But you were my favourite. Another man will search for the meaning to your mayhem, much as you searched for the same thing. Where that takes him is up to him. But all roads lead to the same end, I'm afraid! The man you just killed has a son, and that son is a hurricane of a man who cares for nothing at all. He really is an interesting one! But the rest doesn't concern you; as such, I'll leave it be. _

_Number four. Four answers, I think that's fair. I asked you four questions, didn't I? So number four. Why has all this happened? I trust you blame me, and that's understandable. But I'm afraid it's not so simple. All of this was preventable. By sheer coincidence, you yourself could have prevented it a number of times! And I don't just mean ignoring the calls – before that, a long, long time ago. You and your Lieutenant friend watched a man go helplessly mad and did nothing. So really, aren't you more to blame than I?_

_Perhaps. Perhaps not. That's not for us to decide. _

_That's right, nice and easy into the car. No struggling, no fuss. You really are something else, aren't you?_

_Ah. I've delayed far too long. I should be gone by now. Am I getting sentimental? Haha! That would be quite the punchline!_

_Goodbye, and well done. Please, do enjoy your rest. You've earned it._


End file.
